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Surf's Up

So where’s the wave? This is President Obama’s sixth-year-itch election. The map of states with contested Senate seats could hardly be better from the Republicans’ vantage point. And the breaks this year—strong candidates, avoidance of damaging gaffes, issues such as Obamacare and immigration that stir the party base—have mainly gone the GOP’s way, very unlike 2012.

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Nonetheless, the midterms are far from over. In every single one of the Crystal Ball’s toss-up states, (Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Louisiana and North Carolina), the Republican Senate candidate has not yet opened up a real polling lead in any of them. Democratic nominees have been running hard and staying slightly ahead, or close to, their Republican foes. (See Politico's interactive Senate ratings.)

Earlier this year, we published a “wave chart” giving the range of Senate election outcomes, from ripple to tsunami. Sometimes tidal waves, such as the 2006 Democratic swell that gave the party control of both houses of Congress, develop in late September or October. That’s certainly still a possibility for the GOP in 2014. However, the summer is waning, and as Labor Day approaches our estimate remains a Republican gain of four to eight seats, with the probability greatest for six or seven seats—just enough to put Republicans in charge of Congress’ upper chamber. The lowest GOP advance would fall two seats short of outright control; the largest would produce a 53-47 Republican Senate.

A year ago, it was not hard to find Republican leaders who privately believed the party could score a dramatic breakthrough in the Senate, with the GOP emerging with perhaps 55 or 56 seats. This objective was vital not just for the jousting during President Obama’s final two years in the White House. At least as important is the fact that the GOP sees a much less friendly Senate map in 2016, when it will have to defend 24 of 34 seats, including incumbents elected in 2010 in Democratic states such as Illinois, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. In addition, presidential year turnouts usually draw far more minority and young voters to the polls, most of whom reliably vote Democratic from top to bottom of the ballot. A thin GOP Senate majority created this November could turn out to be very short-lived.

As we’ve said manytimes, 2014 should be a Republican year, with GOP gains in both houses of Congress. Yet Republicans have a terrible record of beating incumbent Democratic senators, going back to their last good year in this category, 1980. There is no obvious way for the GOP to gain the six seats necessary for control without taking down some incumbent Democrats, a task at which Republicans have struggled—they haven’t beaten more than two Democratic Senate incumbents since that huge 1980 landslide.

This year, it is generally conceded that Republicans will grab three open seats. In West Virginia, Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R) has consistently led Secretary of State Natalie Tennant (D) to replace retiring Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D). Even Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has admitted that former Gov. Mike Rounds (R) will take South Dakota’s open seat. And in Montana, Rep. Steve Daines (R) appears destined to inherit the position being warmed by appointed Sen. John Walsh (D), whose plagiarism scandal forced his withdrawal a few weeks ago. A little-known state legislator, Amanda Curtis, is the last-minute, substitute Democratic nominee.

Democrats are hoping to play offense in Georgia and Kentucky, two states that remain close but where Republican voters appear to be coming home to their nominees (although Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s lead is still less than three points).

Assuming the GOP holds all its current seats and wins Montana, South Dakota and West Virginia, the party needs three more to take the Senate. At the moment, Republicans appear to have their best chances in these six states, roughly in this order: Arkansas, Iowa, Louisiana, North Carolina, Alaska and Colorado.

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Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) has proven that he’s no Blanche Lincoln, the Democratic senator from the Razorback State swamped in 2010. Given that landslide and other pro-GOP trends, Republicans expected their 2014 nominee, Rep. Tom Cotton, to make short work of Pryor. The incumbent has hung around, keeping this a tied race (or better), but nonetheless the political odds may be stacked against him—he’s an underdog, if only a slight one, because of deep anti-Obama sentiment in the state.

The Hawkeye election to replace retiring Sen. Tom Harkin is a surprise, though perhaps it shouldn’t be given the state’s usual competitive nature. This race is close, and candidate performance could decide it. Rep. Bruce Braley, the Democrat, has suffered from foot-in-mouth disease, although Democrats are convinced that they have the ammo to paint state Sen. Joni Ernst, the Republican, as too far right. If Ernst’s image remains defined by folksiness—meaning the Democratic attacks don’t do much damage—she has the inside track here.

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) has a very narrow path to avoid a December runoff in the Pelican State, while Rep. Bill Cassidy (R) might not, given the presence of Sarah Palin-backed former Air Force Col. Rob Maness (R) in the race. Louisiana’s unique “jungle primary” system has every candidate for the office run at the same time, which often means that two or more candidates from the same party are on the ballot together (e.g. Cassidy and Maness in 2014). To win the seat, someone has to garner a majority of the vote. If no one wins over 50 percent, the top two finishers advance to face each other—an outcome that may well happen, especially if problems continue to mount for Landrieu. Most recently, she has brought to mind Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill’s (D) “Air Claire” controversies from last cycle: The Louisiana Democrat has had to reimburse the government for fundraising trips on private chartered planes that were initially billed to taxpayers. Whether it matters is debatable, but it seems clear that Cassidy—derided by many Republicans as a “boring” candidate—won’t self-immolate like McCaskill’s 2012 opponent, Todd Akin. There’s an upside to being bland.

Larry J. Sabato is university professor of politics and director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, which publishes the online, free Crystal Ball politics newsletter every Thursday, and a regular columnist for Politico Magazine. His most recent book is The Kennedy Half-Century: The Presidency, Assassination, and Lasting Legacy of John F. Kennedy.

Kyle Kondik is managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a nonpartisan political newsletter produced by the University of Virginia Center for Politics. He also directs the center’s Washington, D.C., office.